Electronic content search and delivery typically involves accessing one or more data stores to obtain content about a requested subject, and providing the content in a manageable form to a user. There are a number of electronic content search and delivery models currently in use. For example, a common Web search model accesses a number of servers and provides a list of links related to keywords entered by a user. Commercial products implementing the Web search model, such as YAHOO!™ and GOOGLE™, are well known. A localized reference model accesses one or more local data stores of content and provides definitions, synonyms, language translations, summaries, or other substantive content related to keywords identified by a user. Commercial products implementing the local reference model include Microsoft Corporation's BOOKSHEL™ 2000. A third model accesses offline or online help information and provides a pop-up box to explain software features, evaluate spelling of text, or provide other brief information. Commercial products implementing the help model include Microsoft Corporation's OFFICE ASSISTANT™, HELP VIEWER™ and TOOLTIPS™.
Combinations of the above models are also available. Some resemble the Web search model, but include aspects of the help model. For example, a product called QUICKCLICK™ (formerly FLYSWAT™—no longer available) evaluated the text of a downloaded Web page and automatically provided links to other Web pages for terms and phrases recognized on the downloaded Web page. Each recognized term and phrase on the Web page was changed to a different color text and associated with a link. A user could then click on one of the colored terms or phrases to be linked to another Web page.
Another commercial product, which is provided by ATOMICA Corporation and called ATOMICA™, extends the Web search model to provide an online version of the localized reference model. This product provides substantive information, rather than links to substantive information, although one option enables a user to search the Web for related information. Although originally owned and commercialized under a different name, details of the product are disclosed in International patent application, publication number WO 01/13245 A1. The ATOMICA software requires software to be downloaded and installed on a user's computer (i.e., on a client computer). When running, the ATOMICA software enables the user to designate a text item displayed in an active window of another software program, such as a word processor, an email program, a browser, a spreadsheet program, etc. ATOMICA retrieves substantive information about the designated text item from an online database and then provides the substantive information through a customized browser window.
As indicated above, the ATOMICA software must be downloaded from a specific Web site and installed by the user on a client computer, based upon an affirmative decision by the user to install the product. A user will likely not know that the software is available, unless informed by another user or by reading a publication that describes the software and indicates where it can be downloaded. Thus, the very existence of this software is somewhat difficult for a user to determine. Even if the ATOMICA software is preinstalled and set to automatically load upon startup of the user's computer, it may not be readily apparent to the user how to activate the software. The ATOMICA software may be set to automatically display a semi-persistent “answer bar.” The answer bar is a small window with a drop-down text box. When the answer bar initially appears, the drop-down box is empty, so the user cannot make any selection. The answer bar also does not provide any substantive content. Instead, by trial and error, the user may determine that text can be entered into the drop-down box. It is the user's entries that are then listed in the drop-down box.
However, there is no indication that a user may designate a word in another window. The answer bar may attract the user to type in a word, but the answer bar does not indicate that the ATOMICA software enables a user to initiate a search with a key-click combination. By default, the ATOMICA software requires a user to activate the software by designating a word in a window and then actuating a mouse button while holding down one or more specific keys on the user's keyboard that the user must remember. To determine how to designate a word and activate the software, the user must read instructions, or learn from another user. Because the ATOMICA software does not make it apparent to a novice user how to activate or use the software, its use is also somewhat difficult to discover.
Once the user is aware of the software and determines how to activate the software, the user may find it difficult to remember how to use the software. Specifically, the user may find it difficult to remember the specific key(s) that must be held down and the mouse button that must be pressed at the same time to activate the ATOMICA software to obtain information on a word or phrase. The user may manually simplify word designation by choosing an option to press only the right mouse button without having to hold down a key at the same time. However, the user must first determine how to find and select this option, and be willing to forgo using the selected mouse button for all other purposes. For example, the right mouse button is often used by many software programs to provide a pop-up menu of frequently used functions, such as cut, copy, and paste commands. If the user selects the right mouse button to designate a word for the ATOMICA software, the user loses the pop-up menu of functions.
Although not currently implemented in the publicly available ATOMICA software, International patent application, publication number WO 01/13245 A1, which is assigned to Atomica Corporation, indicates that a user may place a cursor on a word and wait a specified amount of time to indicate that further information is desired about the designated word. However, the publication provides no enabling detail regarding this point-and-wait indication to obtain information.
In the context of clicking on a text item with a mouse, the above international publication indicates that the ATOMICA software determines a word or words from the designated text item by utilizing a text-grabbing algorithm, such as that described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/127,981 and/or an optical character recognition (OCR) algorithm. Knowing the position indicated by the pointing device, the software installed on the user's computer requests information from the application program that has displayed the text item. According to the international publication, the software receives the word from the application program, “perhaps using an application programming interface (API).” No further detail is provided. Alternatively, if the text is transmitted in a separate data stream, such as a data stream associated with a video stream, the international publication indicates that the program may retrieve the text directly from the separate data stream, rather than determining the word or words from display. The publication provides no further detail on the above word determination techniques. As described in this reference, the program also draws context-indicating words from the body of text, typically from the same sentence as that including the designated word, and/or from a title of the body of the text. The International patent application publication number WO 01/13245 A1 indicates that the user's computer sends a list of words from the body of the text, including the designated word, to a server. For example, if a user clicked on the word “stock,” which was followed in the sentence by the word “broker,” the user's computer would send a list of words including “stock” and “broker.” The international publication does not provide any further detail on how the software on the user's computer extracts or determines the context-indicating words to send to the server.
Once the user's computer sends the list of words to the server, the server runs a context-determination algorithm to determine a context of the designated word. Once the proper context is determined, a program running on the server searches online data stored on the server or other machines comprising a network. The server appears to first search for data regarding multiple words. If no matches are found for the multiple words, the server then searches for the single designated word. There does not appear to be any way to modify or override this search order. The user also does not have any control over the data resources that are searched by the server, or any way to prioritize the type of data that are more relevant to the user. For example, the user cannot choose to receive medical data before business data, if a designated word, acronym, or other text, has multiple different meanings in each of these two fields of interest.
The results of the search are then passed by the server back to the user's computer. Although the online database perhaps provides updated information, because of the product's complete dependence on Internet communication and remote processing of selected text, the server is relatively slow to respond compared to the response time for a localized reference model that does not need to communicate over the Internet.
When the information arrives from the server, it is displayed in a customized browser window. Specifically, the ATOMICA product requires that Microsoft Corporation's INTERNET EXPLORER™ (IE) version 4 or higher be installed on the user's system, because the ATOMICA product uses IE's ActiveX Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) control to display lookup results. The customized browser window overlays any content that is displayed under the area encompassed by the customized browser window. Although the customized browser window can be moved about after it is opened on a display, there is no option that enables a user to selectively position the customized browser window to always appear at a specified position relative to a selected word, or at a desired fixed location on the display. The customized browser window includes a toolbar with standard navigation buttons, such as “back” and “forward” buttons. A menu also enables the user to set some limited options, as described herein. The toolbar also includes a data entry box that enables the user to enter a word or words on which a search for information should be done.
Below the toolbar, the customized browser window is divided into two frames, which the user cannot change. A primary frame displays the substantive search results (or error message, if no results were found). If a word is misspelled, the server will perform a spell check and send a list of alternatives for display in the primary frame. The listed suggestions are hyperlinks to substantive information from the ATOMICA database. If substantive information is provided, but the information is not of a desired type, the user may a select an option in a second frame of the customized browser window to view a list of links to possible alternative meanings. Similarly, one or more other options may be provided in the second frame that provide different types of information for the designated word(s). For example, a medical meaning may be available for the designated word(s) as an alternative to a business meaning that is displayed in the primary frame. The user may select yet another option in the second frame to perform a standard Web search for a list of hyperlinks on the Internet. The resulting hyperlinks are displayed in the primary frame.
To remove the customized browser window from display, the user may manually close the window, or click in another window. Manually closing the customized browser window causes the previously active window underlying the customized browser window to become active again (sometimes referred to as “shifting the focus” to the window). The ATOMICA software assumes that the window containing the designated word was the active window. Thus, the ATOMICA software shifts the focus to that window, even if another window was previously active before the word was designated in a different window. Consequently, the user must click the cursor in the previously active window to shift the focus back to that window. This characteristic of continually shifting the focus makes it difficult for a user to designate words in a secondary window and utilize the resulting substantive information for work in the previously active window. For example, a user may be editing a research report in an active window using a word processor and may wish to obtain substantive information about multiple words found in a secondary window that is displayed by a database program. Using the ATOMICA software, the user must continually shift the focus back and forth between the word processor window and the database window.
Closing the customized browser window optionally (by default) also causes the semi-persistent answer bar to appear on the user's display. As discussed above, the answer bar does not provide any substantive information, but instead, simply provides an input text box in which user can enter a word or words on which to conduct a search for information. The answer bar may be minimized to a small tab, but either the tab or the answer bar then remains on top of other displayed items, and obscures anything underneath it in the display.
A somewhat similar commercial product/service provided by Babylon.Com Ltd., called BABYLON™, combines the localized reference model with the help model and optionally utilizes network access and standard Web searching. When a user clicks on a text item with a mouse, the BABYLON program recognizes a word or words comprising the selection and searches local and/or online glossaries for information related to the selected word(s). If found, a small pop-up window includes a definition, a language translation, and/or other content drawn from glossaries selected by the user.
The BABYLON software must be downloaded and installed on the user's computer. Also as is true of the ATOMICA program, if the user is not aware of the existence of the BABYLON program, then the user will not know to download it from the source Web site. Because there is no apparent indication to a novice user that the software is available, the existence of the BABYLON software is thus also somewhat difficult to discover. In addition, as was true of the ATOMICA software, even if the BABYLON software is preinstalled for the user and set to automatically load upon startup of the user's computer, its use will not be readily apparent, since the user will not know how to designate a word to activate the software without receiving instruction, or learning from another person. Accordingly, the manner in which the BABYLON software is employed will also be somewhat difficult for a user to discover.
Like the ATOMICA software, the user presses one or more mouse buttons while holding down one or more keys on the user's keyboard to activate the software, but the BABYLON software default setting enables a user to press a single mouse button to activate the software. To avoid deactivating functions and quick menus that are already associated with the left and right mouse buttons, if one of these is selected to activate the search for information, the BABYLON software alternatively enables a user to select a word with a center mouse button, e.g., by pressing a scroll wheel if the user's mouse is so equipped. For a user having a mouse with a center button, it is a little easier to remember how to activate the program, if the center mouse button is chosen for this purpose. Nevertheless, the user must still perform some affirmative action to activate the software, and will lose any other functions normally associated with the center mouse button or wheel.
As indicated, the software recognizes a mouse click on a single word or on a set of words, such as “prime rate” or “mother-in-law.” If the user clicks on a single word in a consecutive set of words (e.g. mother-in-law), the software will first resolve the single word by itself. If the user clicks on the same word again, the software generally resolves the set of words with the surrounding context words.
Whether the single selected word, or the set of words are resolved at all also depends on where the selected word falls in relation to certain punctuation marks. For example, in the above quoted phrases, the BABYLON program fails to recognize a word that is directly bounded by a quotation mark, such as the word “mother” in the quoted phrase of “mother-in-law.” However, the BABYLON program recognizes the word “law” in the quoted phrase of “mother-inlaw,” apparently because there is a comma or period before the closing quotation mark. A user may also manually enter single or multiple words in a search field of the pop-up window.
Determination of the word or words depends on the glossaries that are preselected by the user. Each glossary contains a collection of information on a related topic, such as a specific language, a field of science, a unique definition for a company, or other reference material. The glossaries may be downloaded and accessed at a client's local computer, may be accessed via a network or over the Internet, or may be accessed as a combination of local and online glossaries. The BABYLON program searches offline glossaries before searching online glossaries. Within that framework, the BABYLON program appears to determine results in the order of the preselected glossaries. The user may modify the order of the user's individual list of preselected glossaries by dragging and dropping a glossary name into the list.
If the selected word is not included in the glossaries that were preselected by the user, the BABYLON program will attempt to identify one or more non-selected glossaries that include the selected word, and enable the user to add those one or more non-selected glossaries to the user's list of glossaries. However, if the selected word is misspelled, or otherwise unrecognized, the BABYLON software will simply issue an error message in the pop-up window, without any further suggestion. Although not automatically suggested by the BABYLON program, the software enables the user to perform a Web search of the selected word(s) or refer to other online sources, such as an online encyclopedia. However, these additional searches are done and displayed through a separate browser window.
A result of a search by the BABYLON program that is returned from a glossary is displayed in a small pop-up window near the location of the selected word(s). The pop-up window overlays any display content disposed under the area of the pop-up window. The user may split the pop-up window into two sides with one side showing the results and the other side showing other preselected glossaries that include information on the selected word(s) and can select one of the other preselected glossaries in the other half of the window to see the information from that preselected glossary.
The pop-up window can be set to automatically close or minimize when the user moves the mouse again. However, even if the pop-up window automatically closes, the user must re-click in the text area to reactivate the window containing the text (bringing the text window back into focus). Once the pop-up window is closed, there is no other persistent supply of information that can be again accessed, without repeating the search for the information.
Although the products discussed above provide some substantive information in response to a user selecting text and activating a search, they share the following inadequacies. First, the products are difficult for a user to initially discover, and even if preinstalled, a user will not necessarily understand how to use the products. Secondly, they require a user to perform some affirmative action to designate a word, rather than providing a persistent flow of information. Third, the required affirmative action can be somewhat difficult for a user to remember. Fourth, the products employ a character recognition of the bitmap portion of the display screen selected by a user to identify a word or words. And fifth, when their display is active, they obscure underlying content.
A product from a Japanese company, Justsystem Corporation, called DR. MOUSE™, attempts to address the second and third of these inadequacies. Rather than requiring an affirmative action by the user to access information about a designated word or phrase, the DR. MOUSE program implements a hover method for designating a word. The user simply positions the cursor over a word, and the DR. MOUSE software provides a Japanese definition or an English/Japanese translation in a pop-up window. However, the DR. MOUSE program appears to combine the local reference model and the local help model. The only aspect of the Web search model appears to be that DR. MOUSE enables a user to invoke a browser to perform a Web search for links related to the designated word. Software is installed on the user's computer and all substantive definitions and translations are provided from the local software. There do not appear to be any other sources of offline or online substantive information available, such as an encyclopedia.
To determine the word over which the cursor is hovering, the DR. MOUSE program uses character recognition. Specifically, DR. MOUSE appears to use the OKREADER™ OCR engine from Sumitomo Electric Systems Co. As is well known in the art, OCR requires scanning a graphical representation and identifying text characters in the graphical representation. These steps require rather sophisticated recognition that takes time to process, especially if multiple fonts or multiple character sets are supported. Such character recognition is also less reliable than processing text characters directly. Character recognition also can have difficulty recognizing words or phrases that wrap to another line.
The DR. MOUSE program displays the definition or translation in the pop-up window near the designated word. As with the other products discussed above, the DR. MOUSE pop-up window obscures any information in the underlying window. When the user moves the mouse over a different word, the pop-up window appears in a new location near the different word. Thus, there is always a pop-up window obscuring some portion of the underlying content.
Although the DR. MOUSE software does not require a user to perform some affirmative action with mouse buttons or a keyboard to designate a word, and does not require the user to remember any keys that must be activated, the program provides only limited information and does not address the remaining inadequacies discussed above. In light of these shortcomings of the prior art programs, it would clearly be desirable to provide an electronic content search and delivery system that is at least easily discoverable by users; doesn't require any affirmative action by the user to designate a word or words in any active or inactive window and obtain substantive information from multiple offline and online sources in an order that can be prioritized by the user; is easy to remember how to use, or doesn't require remembering keys and buttons, being persistently available with continuously updating information; has faster and more reliable word recognition than can readily be achieved with character recognition-based systems; and doesn't obscure information underlying the dialog produced by the program or otherwise take the focus away from the active window in which the text was entered.